


i don't smoke (except for when i'm missing you)

by unrequited_heartbreak



Series: sav's dreamsmp drabbles [4]
Category: DreamSMP
Genre: Cigarettes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Smoking, Trauma, quangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrequited_heartbreak/pseuds/unrequited_heartbreak
Summary: It’s barely been a day since the 16th. He holds a cigarette between two shaking, bandaged fingers. The end lights up for a moment, throbbing neon. It fades as he breathes in. Smoke scalds his lungs, fills his mouth with the taste of nicotine, then floats up towards the pale-peach sky.(Or, Quackity and Tommy have a chat.)
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & TommyInnit
Series: sav's dreamsmp drabbles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047190
Comments: 12
Kudos: 121





	i don't smoke (except for when i'm missing you)

**Author's Note:**

> good evening ao3 i'm impulsively posting this bc it's been sitting in my drafts for a while and i want the world to see! have a lovely day and leave a comment if you feel so inclined 
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

Quackity is really fucking tired.

It’s barely been a day since the 16th. He holds a cigarette between two shaking, bandaged fingers. The end lights up for a moment, throbbing neon. It fades as he breathes in. Smoke scalds his lungs, fills his mouth with the taste of nicotine, then floats up towards the pale-peach sky. 

It’s a little embarrassing how quickly he had run for them. He knew where Schlatt kept them, and before the man’s body was even cold he had scrambled for the things. He burned his hands, then burned his tongue, then breathed in and in until his lungs were raw. He had smoked maybe one or two cigarettes before, guided by Schlatt’s practiced ease, but this was different. Desperate. He burned through a pack in a matter of hours.

He’s wedged between the remains of two buildings now; they’re nearly unrecognizable. All of Manburg—or, New L’Manburg—is nearly unrecognizable. He’s not sure he can fathom the amount of TNT Wilbur must have collected to make an explosion so overpowering. He really was insane, huh.

Phil, Niki, another newcomer he can’t remember the name of, and a few others had set up something like a hospital in one of the flatter, less destroyed areas, and spent the whole day and night after Techno’s wither attack slaving away to put the people they hadn’t lost back together. Quackity hadn’t been around to see what quite happened to Wilbur, but Phil’s kimono was bloody and his face was grim and that told him enough. He snuck glances at Phil’s wings the entire time his wounds were being treated. 

They were huge, and all broken and bent out of shape, too. Quackity guesses he had used them to shield himself from the explosion. He should be sad for Phil, probably, but instead he wants both to set his wings free and find some thread of solidarity between them and to curl in on himself, run far away, do anything to escape the shadow of his superiority. 

Niki, the saint, hadn’t mentioned Quackity’s wings at any point, even though he could feel her eyes on him. Tubbo had been too caught up in comforting Tommy to say anything at all. 

The sun is nearly risen now. Soft voices float over the ruins, words indecipherable. There’s a deep voice, a higher one, one somewhere in the middle. The whole server has been holding its breath since the explosions, like they’re not sure where to turn next; some members have quietly retreated to their homes, far enough away to be intact, but some haven’t had the luxury. With Wilbur gone, Dream off somewhere, and Schlatt dead, there are no driving forces to push people into action. 

Tension had dissipated, and a tentative alliance between the survivors had formed. What was there to fight over? Where did they go from here?

Most people coped by talking it out—sobbing it out, more accurately—with whatever friends they had made at some point in this insanity, but that was never Quackity’s style. Neither were drugs, but he has cigarettes and he doesn’t have friends, and that sort of takes the decision making out of his hands. 

He takes another drag, lets it burn him up from the inside out. The dull buzz overpowers the throbbing of his wings under his jacket. He’s starting to understand why Schlatt was constantly smoking. 

“Hey.”

Quackity turns at the sudden noise, nearly drops his cigarette. Tommy stares down the alleyway at him with tired eyes.

“...Hey?”

Tommy checks once behind him, as if anyone would care enough to follow them, and tentatively comes closer. He moves awkwardly, quickly, like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. It’s a weird look on him. Quackity hasn’t ever been paying enough attention to notice it if it was there before.

“I—” Tommy pauses, trying to collect his thoughts, “I wanted to ask you about Tubbo. And Schlatt.”

Quackity resists the urge to pray under his breath by taking another breath of smoke. 

“Tubbo is—he’s like... nervous, Big Q, in a way I’ve never seen him. I tried to hug him and he—he flinched away from me. He never told me about Schlatt hurting him, but I don’t know what else to think,” Tommy’s voice is worn and desperate, but it has a coldness underneath it that makes Quackity wary. He’s clearly incredibly angry. Dangerously angry. Quackity doesn’t have time to unpack how fucked up this situation is. 

“I’m not sure what to tell you, man,” Quackity laughs hoarsely, just to fill the silence, “I tried to make sure Schlatt wouldn’t take things out on him or Fundy. I was never good at stopping him when he was drunk, though. I don’t know what he did when I wasn’t around.”

The implication of who Schlatt took things out on instead hangs heavy between them. Quackity’s throat is tight with the vulnerability of it. He looks over to Tommy, trying to calm the rising panic in his chest. Schlatt is dead. Schlatt is gone. That isn’t as comforting as it should be.

“I wish that motherfucker was still alive so I could kill him again,” Tommy says quietly.

“Yeah? You and me both.”

They fall into silence. Sunlight starts to creep into the gap they stand in, falls in thin strips over their tense shoulders. Quackity breathes in again, exhales golden.

Tommy wrinkles his nose at the cloud of smoke, moves back again to avoid the stink of it, “Why do you do that shit? It’s gross.”

“It’s something to do,” Quackity shrugs, and suddenly looks much older than nineteen. Tommy goes quiet again, unsure what to say. 

They’re sort of stuck, so similar and yet so different. Feeling the same pain, coping in separate ways. Grief spares no one, but you can choose how it devours you.

Tommy chooses rage. That surprises no one, really, he’s always yelled instead of spoken, stomped instead of walked. When he loses control, when the world is against him (and isn’t it always), he lashes out and paints his hurt on everyone he sees. He’s quieter now, though, an ember instead of a flame. He’s burned himself out. 

Quackity chooses... well, he chooses to not choose. He chooses nicotine, and biting wind, and laughing until his chest hurts. It’s always been easier to laugh it off than to feel, no matter what the world threw at him (and god, was it a lot), it was like water off a duck’s back. He tries not to think about the times he fails. He buries his breakdowns at the graves of the things he loses. 

The sun rises fully, and Tommy leaves without a word. There’s no expectation to speak. 

Quackity lights another cigarette.


End file.
